Arts aficionados from the Rice community and the Houston area gathered at the Moody Center for the Arts on April 14 for the latest iteration of the “Dimensions Variable” programming series. This one-of-a-kind evening of experimental music and dance performances marked yet another unexpected interdisciplinary event during the Moody’s fifth anniversary year.
Designed to complement and activate many of the works in the Moody’s “Soundwaves: Experimental Strategies in Art + Music” exhibition currently on view, the evening began with a live performance of Diné artist Raven Chacon’s “American Ledger No. 1.” The graphic score — a piece of written music using non-traditional icons and nomenclature in addition to standard musical notation — was led by Shepherd School of Music conductor Sam Wu and performed by Nameless Sound, a Houston experimental music collective, as well as musicians from the Shepherd School.
“Creative collaboration is at the heart of the Moody’s public programs,” said Alison Weaver, the Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director of the Moody Center for the Arts. “We were thrilled to be able to connect Rice students with professional musicians from Nameless Sound, through the extraordinary work of Raven Chacon.”
Chacon created this particular score as an open-ended invitation to respond to histories of forced migration and the relocation of indigenous communities from their native lands. “I’m using this score as an opportunity to tell the narrative and even creation story, if you will, of a place, of the country of the United States,” Chacon wrote in his artist statement on the score.
The experimental music piece was performed with a surprising breadth of non-traditional “instruments,” such as struck matches, shaken jars of coins, an ax chopping away at a fallen tree limb and a cacophony of police whistles blown in deafening unison. The piece also incorporated traditional instruments including drums, brass, strings and electric guitar.
After the performance, Houston-based dancer Joseph Stevens led a procession of guests into the Moody galleries while wearing and performing in Berlin-based artist Nevin Aladağ’s “Body Instruments.” Transforming into a multi-instrument one-man-band, the dancer gracefully lunged, twisted and contorted his body to activate the jingle bells adorning the suit’s legs; the mournful, bellowing accordions under the suit’s arms; and the taut, round drum resting atop Stevens’ head.
Once guests had processed indoors, Shepherd School percussionist Nick Finley played another Aladağ piece, the esoteric “Resonator Percussion.” Finley entranced spectators with a free-flowing performance in which he used wire brushes and mallets to activate the instrument’s bells and its assortment of wooden and metallic surfaces of various shapes and textures.
The night concluded with one final act: punk rocker Mad Whit’s electric guitar performance activating Naama Tsabar’s “Transitions,” a fully-functioning amplifier with its innards of dangling cords and wires artfully arrayed across a wall-mounted canvas. Vacillating between high-intensity guitar riffs and cathartic howls directly into the guitar’s fretboard, the performance left attendees’ hearts racing as they lingered in the gallery to take in the many other pieces currently on view.
